COOK COUNTY, Ill. (TCD) — A 44-year-old Michigan woman will spend two decades behind bars for killing her newborn twins in 2003 and disposing of their remains in a trash bin in Illinois.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office announced May 7 that Antoinette Briley pleaded guilty to murder and was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. Deputies said she was initially charged with two counts of first-degree murder in December 2020.
According to the sheriff’s office, on June 6, 2003, a Waste Management worker found the bodies of two newborn twin boys while emptying trash bins in an alley in unincorporated Stickney Township, Illinois. The employee reportedly “saw the bodies in the front lift bucket of her garbage truck.”
An autopsy revealed the twin babies were born alive but died of asphyxiation. Their deaths were ruled homicides, but investigators weren’t able to identify a suspect, and the case went cold.
The case was reopened in 2018, and investigators used genetic genealogy to identify Briley as the victims’ biological mother. According to WMAQ-TV, detectives went to Holland, Michigan, and recovered the butt of a cigarette Briley had smoked. They then analyzed her DNA and discovered it was a match to the twin boys.
On Dec. 3, 2020, sheriff’s police detectives located Briley in Cook County, Illinois, and took her into custody.
Briley reportedly told officials she knew she was pregnant in 2003, and she felt abdominal pains while she was at her grandfather’s home. According to WMAQ, Briley said she gave birth in a bathtub, and the twins were crying “but not loud enough that the neighbors could hear.”
Briley allegedly put her newborn sons into a duffel bag to go to the hospital, but she changed her mind on the way. WMAQ reports that Briley told detectives no one knew she had given birth, so “no one would ever have to know.” Briley then reportedly put the babies in a trash bin and drove to her grandfather’s house.
In 2020, Briley allegedly told detectives that “she wishes she could take the whole day back.”
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